1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to storage area networks, and more particularly to mechanisms for enforcing interoperability matrix parameters in a storage area network.
2. Background of the Invention
With the increasing popularity of Internet commerce and network centric computing, businesses and other organizations are becoming more and more reliant on information. To handle all of this data, storage area networks or SANs have become very popular. A SAN typically includes a number of storage devices, a plurality of Hosts, and a number of Switches arranged in a Switching Fabric that connects the storage devices and the Hosts.
Most SANs rely on the Fibre Channel protocol for communication within the Fabric. For a detailed explanation of the Fibre Channel protocol and Fibre Channel Switching Fabrics and Services, see the following publications: ANSI INCITS 373-2003, Fibre Channel Framing and Signaling Interface (FC-FS); ANSI INCITS 384-2004, Fibre Channel-Switch Fabric-3 (FC-SW-3); and ANSI INCITS 387-2004, Fibre Channel-Generic Services-4 (FC-GS-4); all of which are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.
In conventional Fibre Channel, each device (e.g., hosts, storage devices and switches) is identified by an unique eight (8) byte wide Node_Name assigned by the manufacturer. When the Fibre Channel devices are interconnected to form a SAN, the Node_Name (along with other parameters) is used to identify each device. Fibre Channel frames are used for communication among the devices in the SAN. The Node_Name, however, is not used by the frames. Instead the Fibre Channel Port of each end device (hosts and storage devices) is addressed via a three (3) byte Fibre Channel address (or FCID), allocated dynamically to the end devices by the fabric. A unique FCID is assigned to a host device or disk device when the device logs in to the fabric. Additionally, each switch in the fabric is assigned a specific domain by the domain manager when the switch is connected to the fabric. All the devices connected to a given switch will have the DomainID of the switch as the first byte of their FCIDs. This “Domain” value is used for routing the frames within the fabric. Each FC frame header will include a Source Identifier (SID) field representing the source FCID, and a Destination Identifier (DID) field representing the destination FCID.
Interoperability between different SAN devices is an important consideration when configuring a SAN network. Even though many SAN protocols are standardized, it is common for different vendors to use different standardized SAN protocols for their SAN device implementations. As a result, many SAN devices from different vendors are not compatible with each other. Additionally, it is also possible for SAN devices from the same vendor to be incompatible with each other, for example, if the SAN devices have different firmware versions. Additional compatibility issues between SAN devices may also arise, for example, due to differences in host bus adaptor (HBA) firmware implementations and/or differences in operating system implementations. In some cases, interoperability issues between SAN devices have resulted in SAN availability being compromised and/or loss of data.
Currently, enforcement of SAN device interoperability is typically performed by the customer or administrator via manual configuration technique. That is, the customer/administrator is required to manually configure the SAN in a manner so as to prevent incompatible devices from talking to each other. Additionally, the customer/administrator must also keep track of new/updated interoperability information (such as, for example, new firmware releases, new types of hardware, etc.), and manually update the SAN configuration parameters in response to such information in order to maintain effective enforcement of SAN device interoperability. Not surprisingly, such manual interoperability enforcement techniques are extremely susceptible to human error.
Accordingly, it will be appreciated that there exists a need for improving SAN device interoperability enforcement techniques implemented in SAN or Fibre Channel networks.